Draíocht Blog

Sharon Murphy will be Draíocht’s Curator-in-Residence 2017 having recently received an Arts Council Visual Arts Curatorial Award. Her interests as Curator focus on the centrality of art within the lives of young people; the intersections between youth culture and visual culture; and the relationship between the visual and the performative. She sees Draíocht’s Galleries not only as places to show work but also as creative social spaces.

Her residency will explore models of practice and programming in the visual arts that engage and animate the Dublin 15 community, especially its culturally diverse and young population.

The outline programme for 2017 will include:

- A year-long residency by artist Michael McLoughlin
- A children’s commission
- An inaugural visual culture season
- A public commission involving artists from Fingal and supported by Fingal County Council.

Sharon is an independent visual art curator and photographer based in Dublin. She holds an MA in Modern Drama, a BA in Fine Art Photography and was the Irish recipient of the Jerome Hynes Fellowship on the Clore Cultural Leadership Programme (UK) 2007/2008.

NEW DIRECTIONS IN THE VISUAL ARTS 2017-2021
Draíocht has recently created a new strategic framework for the visual arts for the next five years which includes the following features:

- a curated approach to programming the visual arts
- a commitment to ensure that visual arts programming within Draíocht (or led by it) takes close cognisance of the demography of Dublin 15 and the social context within which we work
- an openness to the changing nature of the visual arts and to increased inter- disciplinary practice.

The programme will be officially launched in Spring 2017 when full details will be announced.